


Wild Frontier

by shinyhuman



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: 1800s US except being queer is ordinary bc this is fiction and I can Do That, Alternate Universe, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Gun Violence, Orgasm Delay/Denial, alternate universe - wild west, outlaw!Anne Lister, this anne lister says ACAB and she’s rite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:46:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22260532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyhuman/pseuds/shinyhuman
Summary: After the death of her uncle, Anne Lister steps up as the leader of a notorious outlaw gang. Ann Walker, heiress to a ranch and fortune prolific enough to be the namesake of the nearby town, longs to escape a cruel destiny devised by her family. A fateful encounter in the saloon begins an affair that shakes the foundation of the little town.
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854)
Comments: 61
Kudos: 193





	1. The Devil's Prophet

Ann didn’t know who the woman was. Only that she looked like someone who would ignite her father’s rage and make her mother roll in her grave if Ann batted her eyes at her. 

The woman was different from the townsfolk Ann was familiar with. She was an odd sight in all-black leathers, three pistols strapped to her waist, and the flat, wide-brimmed hat with a coffin-shaped crown resting on the table beside her. She exuded confidence, leaning back in her chair as she looked at her cards, and pushed a stack of coins toward the center of the table. The men around her looked at each other, expressions betraying a mixture of fear and bewilderment.

“Afraid to lose?” the woman teased in a low, husky voice. “I don’t bite, my friends. You don’t have to make it so easy.”

Moments later, she pocketed the winnings anyway, then tipped her hat to them. It was a cheeky thing, her smirk deepening the laugh lines on her cheek. Ann took a deep breath, then stepped behind her. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She hoped she didn’t look as meek as she felt.

Ann said, “I don’t recognize your face, miss.”

Curse her voice! It was like the shrill sound of a bell in the morning. Ann tried to make up for it by speaking softly, but it only shrank her presence. She already regretted her bravery; she wasn’t good enough to stand before this full, bright presence, much less steal her heart for a night.

The woman stood abruptly, her chair squeaking against the sticky wooden floor. She offered her hand. Ann took it, marveling at her long fingers, and the warmth of her firm grip. Despite herself, her heart fluttered in her chest.

“You’re a pretty thing, aren’t you?” the woman said. 

Instead of looking over her body, the woman held Ann’s gaze, the corners of her eyes and lips softening. That alone set Ann’s heart going. She was handsome, too, with a strong jaw, high cheekbones, and earthy brown eyes. 

Ann opened her mouth to reply, but found she was speechless.

“That’s Miss Walker, ma’am,” one of the men informed her. “She—”

The woman interrupted him, raising her eyebrows at Ann. “Walker? Of Walker family fame?” she said. It wasn’t a question. She gestured to a chair. “Sit down, please. I would be honored to make your acquaintance…?”

“Ann,” Ann choked.

“Ann,” she repeated, biting her lip. “A lovely name. Something we share.”

Anne’s fingertips traced the lines on Ann’s palm. Ann felt as if she might faint from the wonderful, tingling sensation that raced directly from her hand to her stomach. She pulled her hand away to save herself from embarrassment.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve never seen you in town before. Are you passing through? Looking for work? The pits could always use more hands but—well, my brother recently left for California, and we’re a bit short on the ranch.”

Between her own shortness of breath and the smile creeping on Anne’s lips, Ann knew she’d rambled. Her nerves always got the better of her. 

“I’m just passing through,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “But if work on the ranch comes with your company, I wouldn’t say no to a day or two of hard work.”

Anne lay her hat on the table and ran her fingers through her hair. Her snarled, dark brown hair was tied into a loose braid. Ann stared, fully aware that staring was blatant and rude, yet unable to pull herself away. She could only imagine undoing Anne’s braid and taming her wild hair with a brush and a little patience.

Anne caught her eye and grinned.

“Does that sound amiable to you, Miss Walker?”

Ann returned to reality with a start. Solitude was Ann’s favorite part of her mornings on the ranch, and why she insisted to her father that she would still do it, regardless of her position in the town and her pending marital status. Watching the sunrise in the cool, light morning air, and the pounding of hoofbeats around her with no threat of human interaction gave Ann peace. 

The idea of working alongside Anne was terrifying, at best. But in a good way. A surge of excitement she didn’t expect welled within her at the idea.

Ann stammered, “Oh, yes. Um, miss…?”

“Anne is fine,” Anne said.

“Right,” Ann said, gathering herself. Her cheeks burned. “We’ll start tomorrow morning, then. Early, around four-thirty or five. Meet me in the barn furthest from the house. I’ll—I’ll let the hands know you’re coming. Are you…familiar with horses?”

“Been around them all my life,” Anne said.

Ann smiled, absently tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She said, “Ever broken any in?”

“No, but I’m not afraid of getting tossed around a little.”

Ann didn’t miss the way Anne’s eyes followed the movement of her hand. Her cheeks hurt from the grin she couldn’t wipe off her face. For a moment, she wondered whether Anne would actually come. The thought of never seeing her again bolstered her courage.

“Would you walk me to my house? Just so I can get to know the woman I’ve hired a little better,” Ann said. The confidence in her own voice surprised her.

Anne offered her arm, and she took it.

“What would you like to know about me?” Anne asked.

They pushed the door open into a burst of sunlight. Anne angled her hat down over her eyes, and Ann held her handkerchief over her mouth to block rolling dust from caking her tongue. The town bustled before dinner, everyone in a frenzy to get supplies before the shops closed.

“Anything,” Ann said.

“Hmm. Well, you know that I’ve grown up around horses. But as to where I’m from—my family and I travelled a lot. We still do,” she added.

“Where are they?” Ann asked, looking over her shoulder as though they followed them.

“Oh, around. I snuck off,” Anne admitted, like it was a secret. “They don’t like it when I do that. I’m sure I’ll get a good talking to from my sister when I return tonight.”

Ann giggled. “Do you not like them? I like to sneak off when my father’s busy or not around.”

“Ah, they’re—” Anne waved her hand, as though that was a suitable enough explanation. “—they’re not sure what to make of me. I’m head of the family, now that my uncle’s passed and—well, I’m different from my uncle. We’re getting used to each other.”

“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what I would do if my father died. That’s so brave of you, to assume responsibility like that,” Ann said. “It’s admirable. Are you travelling farther West?”

Anne’s gaze softened. For a moment, Ann wondered if the woman would kiss her. They leaned closer together, and then Anne pressed her lips to her forehead. She sighed, slow and sweet. That moment lasted longer than any in Ann’s life, yet it was somehow not long enough.

“We go where the wind leads us,” Anne finally answered. “Sometimes farther West. Sometimes East. Sometimes North, where the winters are unbearably cold, but the forests and trees breathtakingly beautiful in the snow. Right now, it’s here.”

“I can see why you don’t want to be here for long. It’s a boring place,” Ann joked. “Almost everything is orange and red.”

“That’s what makes it so beautiful, don’t you think? Not far from here, absolutely everything is red. Red rocks, sand, and even water. Not from the blood of war or mining, but just nature itself, and dust from the stone. You should go, sometime, where the river is warm and calm. It is the fullest peace a human being can ever know,” Anne said. 

She gazed far off into the horizon, like she could see it even from here. Ann wondered if it was the kind of thing that stayed with her, or if it was something she’d forgotten and grasped every day from the depths of her memory, afraid to lose it entirely.

“Why did you leave?” Ann said.

Anne looked away. Ann got the feeling she somehow asked too personal a question, and opened her mouth to apologize, but Anne spoke first.

“Do you know who I am?” Anne asked curiously. “I’m sure your daddy won’t like that you’ve been speaking to someone like me. I saw the way those men gawked at me for having the gall to speak to you. Or perhaps it was you, daring to speak to me? It doesn’t matter which it was, I suppose.”

Ann smoothed her finger over Anne’s sharp, and handsome cheek. 

“No, I don’t. But I can guess. You’re a desperado, maybe. Ran afoul of the law in your youth and too wild now to turn back. You like drinking and women and threatening to kill things. You like to swagger in and think you’re better than everyone else, because they’ll do what you want if you point a gun at them,” she accused gently. 

While she spoke, Anne looked her over, her grin widening with each speculation. She laughed. It was a kind, light thing, as though Ann had told her the best joke she’d heard in her life. Anne kissed her fingertip, then held her hand.

“I  _ am _ better than everyone else,” she said playfully. “But not because of that reason. Anyone can point a gun at a man. I do it well, that’s true. I’m a good shot. I could give anyone in this town and every town for fifty miles a run for their money, in that regard.”

“Then why?”

“Perhaps I’ll show you someday, pretty girl,” she said, winking. “But the rest of that story, I like. Very romantic. It makes me feel like I had control over all the things that happened to me. It would be preferable to think I’m here because of the choices I’ve made and nothing else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Instead of choosing our place in the world, we’re born to be what we are. We must grow into ourselves. Destiny is the word, I think, but it doesn’t feel so poetic.”

“I don’t want to grow into what I am,” Ann said bitterly. “But that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what I want. The universe, my f-family—will whittle me down into whoever they want me to be. And I’m better off accepting it than f-fighting it.”

Ann’s face grew hot. She regretted approaching Anne and convincing her to walk her home. They were the actions of a coward who was afraid to accept her fate, and it took a stranger to tell her succinctly that it was so. Ann thought the woman looked like the kind of person that might be willing to point her gun in the face of destiny—or, more literally, her father—because she was a wild thing that believed in the freedom of will. But even she didn’t. 

Ann realized, with crippling embarrassment, that she was a fool. 

Anne frowned. She said softly, “That’s not what I meant. I meant that some things aren’t choices. They just happen. Whatever your family wants to do to you, they will try to do it, and that isn’t your fault or a choice you made. What you want matters very much, darling, if you’ve got the bravery to demand it.”

Ann laughed humorlessly. “No matter how strongly I demand it, he’ll refuse me.”

“Oh, I don’t mean from your daddy,” Anne said. “Asking permission isn’t making a demand. I think, if you want something, you should reach out and take it. Demand it. Don’t take no for an answer, and spit at the consequences. If someone opposes you, call their threats. Expose them as the cowards they are.”

Ann never met someone who could see another’s soul. She’d heard about them, living at the heart of the desert or deep in the mountains. She heard that they could delve into the deepest parts of someone without knowing so much as their name, and heal what was broken. They could excavate shards of memories that caused chest pain, soothe stomachaches that had no cause, and heal broken limbs twice as fast. It sounded magnificent. But the uncertainty of what it felt like terrified her. Until now.

Anne saw her soul, and it felt like a creeping warmth through her body. It was as calming as water trickling over polished stones in a stream. Ann didn’t know anything inside her was broken, but felt suddenly whole. Seen.

“You think so?” Ann asked quietly, pondering. “That I could—that I’m capable of something like that?”

“I do.”

They reached the outskirts of the ranch. The wind tossed and rolled the long yellow-green grasses and bright pink and blue wildflowers of the fields. They stopped to look out, and Ann held tightly on to her arm. Anne looked at her tenderly.

“Are you spoken for? A woman like you, with so much influence in the town—you must have a number of suitors,” Anne said.

Ann grimaced. She held the expression to make sure Anne saw the measure of her disgust.

“I’ve been promised to a Reverend Ainsworth. I’ve never met him. He arrived in town earlier today, actually, but I’ve been avoiding meeting him. I’m sure he’s kind and all, but—I don’t love him. I’d rather be free to choose,” she said softly, catching Anne’s eye with a small smile.

“We’re kindred spirits, you and I,” Anne said. She squeezed Ann’s arm, then let her go. “I look forward to tomorrow.”

Ann found herself looking into the fields awhile longer. The bravery required of her that day already weighed in her bones, sinking her head and shoulders down. Anxiety, excitement, and dread swirled within her all at once, quickening her breath. Her hands trembled when she held them in front of her. 

Ann closed her eyes, and let the wind remind her how to breathe. 

***

The wind could only do so much; Ann’s body hummed when she entered the house, terrified to run into the stranger she was about to marry in the entry, the hall, the dining room. Her heart jumped higher into her throat with each step. How she already pitied him, trapping himself unknowingly into a loveless marriage.

Ann ventured farther into the large house, and discovered it was empty. There was only her cousin Catherine, who had taken up care for the house since Ann’s mother died and Ann insisted on working the ranch. Catherine sat at their large dining room table, a newspaper folded in her lap.

“The reverend’s been here for hours, Ann,” Catherine scolded gently. “Your father is showing him around. They’ve been gone for a while, so I’m sure they’ll be back any minute.”

“What do you think of him?” Ann asked.

She wasn’t sure what kind of answer she wanted. Nothing would make her like him—he was already cursed with her father’s approval. The rest didn’t matter.

“He’s attractive enough,” she answered, as if that’s what Ann wanted to hear. “And he seems quiet. He and your father became fast friends,” she added as laughter echoed from the other side of the house.

Ann immediately sat next to Catherine, just to feel less alone against the pair of them. Her father’s heavy boots muffled their conversation. Ann pretended to read the paper to avoid looking at them.

When he entered the room, her father hung his hat at the end of the chair and gestured to the reverend. 

“Annie, this is Reverend Ainsworth. He came to meet you,” he prodded, as though there was something she was supposed to say.

Ann looked up at him. She tried to wipe the frown off her face for the sake of his innocence in the matter, but her expression turned into a grimace instead. When she opened her mouth to say something, there was nothing instead.

He was attractive, she supposed, but ordinary. He curled his lip, likely to match her grimace, and his eyes took in the length of her body. His hand swallowed hers when he shook it. Ann felt small and defenseless, like an animal in a menagerie. If she hated the idea of him before, it was worse now; his expression snuffed out her pity and replaced it with fear.

At supper, Ann stared at the bowl of rabbit stew in front of her, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was nauseous. Catherine and her father made polite conversation with the reverend, but she felt his eyes on her the entire time. She caught bits of pieces of conversation, but nothing piqued her interest until her father put his head in his hands.

“There are reports of the Listers coming this way,” he said solemnly. “Apparently James Lister’s died—some kind of infection, a bullet wound, I’ll bet—and the daughter or niece has taken his place. She’s as deadly as him. More, maybe, since she’s got so much to prove.” He spat. 

The Listers were a notorious outlaw gang. Drawings of James Lister’s face were plastered everywhere on wanted posters, and details of their exploits filled pages of the newspaper. Ann often wondered how much of it was true, and how much was hyperbole. But she’d heard nothing of the new leader until now.

“Who?” Ann said.

“They’re calling her the devil’s prophet,” Catherine answered, lip trembling. “Oh, I hope it’s not true. We’re so peaceful, and so kind. The sheriff and his brother—they’ll protect us, won’t they?”

“Why do they call her that?”

“Because she’s evil, I suppose. Does the devil’s work, his mischief, his—his deeds. I hear she murders every man who looks at her wrong. They’ll rob the whole town, and slaughter us all,” Catherine wailed. “And they say you can hear them coming, like thunder on a cloudless day.”

All four of them sat silent, listening.

“What are we going to do?” Ann asked fearfully. 

Beads of broth clung to his gray-gold mustache. “What we always do. We’ll just live our lives, and defend the ranch and the town when the time comes.”

“Will that be enough?”

He shrugged. “If it isn’t, what can we do? Let sheriff Rawson worry about that. I’ll talk to him in the morning, after I help Reverend Ainsworth get settled in the church. And then maybe you two can get to know each other in the afternoon, after your chores are finished.”

Ann lifted her spoon with a trembling hand. She didn’t acknowledge him, or Mr. Ainsworth. The soup was cold, but she blew on it anyway, fitting the bite slowly into her mouth. The warmth and elation that flourished within her after her conversation with Anne faded. A cold loneliness descended upon her. 

***

When Anne returned to camp, Marian was upset. As usual.

“You can’t just go out and do whatever you want anymore. You have responsibilities. The consequences of your actions don’t affect just you, you know, they affect every single one of us,” Marian scolded, her voice rising.

Anne hardly listened while her sister spoke. She took a seat by the makeshift stove and set her rifle in her lap for a well-needed polish. Marian narrowed her eyes, likely searching Anne’s expression for guilt. She wouldn’t find any; Anne had nothing to feel guilty about.

Anne met her eyes. “Have you finished?”

Marian scoffed. “Well? What were you doing? Something important, I hope. We’ve been out here for days, waiting for you. You went into Walker, I heard?”

“I did,” Anne said. She added a small dab of oil to a blackened cloth.

“Would the mine be profitable? Is the Walker family as wealthy as they say? Or are we going to move on? We need details, Anne. I can’t read your mind,” Marian said, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll tell you after tomorrow, if the Walkers are rich as they say. I only saw the outside of the mansion today,” Anne said, probably a little too proudly.

“Heard you’re sweet on the Walker girl,” Marian said, narrowing her eyes. “The Booths went into town for supplies, since we didn’t know to ask you to do it. Saw you walk out of the saloon with her on your arm. That’s going to be trouble, isn’t it?”

“Of course not,” Anne scoffed

“It’s only a matter of time before your face is everywhere and you can’t do that anymore,” Marian reminded her. “You can’t get used to being anonymous, it—”

“Damn, Marian, I know!” Anne shouted. The conversation around them fell silent.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. “I’m just worried about you. Uncle James died so unexpectedly, I—I just worry now. You’re too much like him.”

Anne sighed, meeting her eyes. She said, “I know.”

“Are you alright? Usually you…fight me more,” Marian said.

“Ugh. I’ll be fine. I’m just—I’d like to polish my rifle in peace,” she grumbled.

Marian nodded, giving her a small smile, and left. 

In the silence, her thoughts drifted to Ann Walker. So sweet, so shy, so meek—usually too much so for Anne, but there was an undercurrent of…something…underneath. Something. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and the elusiveness frustrated and intrigued her. 

Ann liked her well enough. She giggled, blushed, and leaned in to Anne’s touch. She seemed utterly captivated by Anne’s conversation, hanging on to her every word, and ignoring the glances and stares around them. The townsfolk of Walker didn’t yet know who she was, of course, but they had a healthy distrust for strangers.

Anne was used to taking what she wanted. She could claim this girl’s body for herself, because Ann would more than likely offer it to her. It was the things she couldn’t have, that were difficult or impossible to take, that Anne wanted most. Anne wanted Ann’s fortune, and possibly her hand in marriage. And she wanted to kiss her gently. 

She didn’t want to fight for dominance, or stake claim on the woman like she was an object. Ann could just love her, and it would be an understanding. They could fall together, instead of having to pry each other from the cold, unsympathetic fingers of the universe.

Of course, she didn’t know the girl well enough. She could be a fool, or have an ugly laugh, or have unsavory interests. Anne was simply lonely, and it was comforting to dream. Maybe they could be something more than two ships passing in the night. 

Or maybe they were nothing at all, a possibility illuminated in her wildest dreams, but abandoned to darkness. 

Anne worked the cloth over the barrel. Grime swirled on the worn metal like paint, clouding the sheen of silver, but gathering more with each pass. She grimaced. She should never have let it get this dirty.


	2. Ships in the Night

Anne arrived early to wander through the barns and sheds of the Walker ranch. She wanted to get a peek at their true wealth, as Marian insisted, and find some semblance of calm in the chilly morning air. 

Anne begrudgingly acknowledged that Marian was right, on the account that someone would soon recognize her face enough to get a good rendering. The cold allowed her to cover her nose and mouth with her black bandanna without suspicion. She abandoned her black leathers for more ordinary work clothes—a rough, black linen shirt, her uncle’s old leather gloves that were worn down at the fingertips, a thin, brown leather vest cracked in places with age, and a tan wool poncho to block out the wind.

The first few barns were full of tools and supplies. Thick, waxed ropes and harnesses hung neatly on the walls; one room displayed a dozen or so embellished cloth and leather saddles; in another, a number of scythes, rakes, and shovels were propped against the wall. 

Anne picked one up to look at it more closely. Each tool was finely forged and bore no rust. They were used, certainly, thin white scratches climbed the steel and the wooden handles were soft with wear. Yet they were too fine to be made locally.

Two sets of footsteps crunched hay from the other side. Anne spun to face them, her hand reaching for the pistol at her hip.

The first, an older man, pointed his rifle at Anne. He dressed in a light leather jacket and wore a thin hat tilted back so the rim circled his head like a halo. The woman beside him looked between them and whispered something indiscernible.

“This is the Walker ranch, friend, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place. It’d be kind of you to leave without trouble,” he said sternly, gesturing with the gun.

Anne raised her hands obediently. “I’m helping Miss Walker today, and I can’t quite remember where she said she’d be. But she did say she’d tell you I was coming,” Anne informed them.

“I didn’t know they were s’posed to be a woman, did you?” he said, turning to his partner.

“I don’t recall, now that I think about it,” she said, eyeing Anne with suspicion. “What was it Miss Walker said?”

“Could’ve sworn she said ‘man,’ simple like that. I remember thinking, ‘That’s strange, why’s she going around town introducing herself to men when she’s already engaged?’ Not that I’m making judgments, you understand, that’s not my place. I just remember thinking the question,” he finished, scratching his chin.

If she, Anne Lister, leader of an outlaw gang with decades of fearsome renown and building wealth, were to die at the hand of two idiot farmhands with her hands willingly up, not even hell could conceive of a greater humiliation. The thought of reliving this moment over and over like Sisyphus pushing his rock was itself repugnant. 

Anne rolled her eyes. “My name is Anne,” she said through grit teeth.

“‘Anne,’” the woman said, rolling her name on her tongue. “That could’ve been it, right? Pretty close to ‘man,’ and makes more sense, as it’s a name.”

“Take me to her, if you want,” Anne snapped. “Just put the gun down.”

“Look at her, making orders!” the man laughed as he lowered the gun. His laugh was good-natured and full. “I wouldn’t talk to Miss Walker like that, ma’am. Her daddy can be kind if he likes you, but if he doesn’t—well. Best to move on to a different town.”

Anne wasn’t afraid of him. She’d met a dozen mister Walkers and killed them or stolen from them without so much as a drop of blood touching her boot. They were the kind of men that postured with wealth and the influence it brought, unaware that the kind of thieves it attracted were rarely intimidated by either.

Anne didn’t care about the little town of Walker. There were dozens like it sprinkled all over, each like a quaint oasis in the wilderness hiding folks as cruel as she and her family, only wearing costumes of law and civility to pretend their cruelty was committed in the name of God and the greater good. Anne could order it pillaged and its people slaughtered and she wouldn’t bat an eye. Its estranged darling, however, intrigued her.

The farmhand led her to Ann. He rested the rifle on his shoulder and made animated conversation about the weather. He theorized about the influence of magic rituals bringing storms and droughts, and Anne summoned all of her willpower to ignore their ridiculousness. 

When he spoke, she barely responded, giving him a grunt when he asked a questions and occasionally turning her body completely away. If it didn’t lead to an actual conversation with him, Anne might have informed him that she’d studied the weather for years, and the patterns changed depending on where one lived relative to the mountains, and not the murmurings of a mystic in the woods.

They stopped outside a smaller barn with two wide-open doors at each end and four stables along each side. Ann was at the far end, the back of her head bobbing in and out of sight as she worked.

Anne approached her, walking away from the farmhand mid-sentence. Each of the eight stables held a horse, their faces stuffed inside a bag at the corner of their pens, chewing furiously. 

Ann wore a plain, long-sleeved dress and thick leather boots. She spoke gently to the horse as she brushed its mane, then stroked its white-and-tan freckled face with her free hand. Anne noticed with a smile that Ann’s splayed hand was smaller than its cheek.

Ann turned, and a grin brightened her face. Her eyes swept Anne’s body, and she teased, “A little cold? All this talk about pretty snow in the north, I half-expected you to show up in only a vest, raving about the nice weather.”

“All that means is I know how to keep warm,” she said, smiling under the bandana.

“Don’t you know not to hide your face from a lady?” Ann laughed, and reached to tug it down.

Without thinking, Anne caught her wrist, and Ann’s smile faltered. Anne expected Ann Walker to be a coy girl, hesitating to make every move. She longed for the brush of Ann’s finger on her cheek, and cursed to herself under her breath. They looked at each other with wide eyes and mutual regret. Anne tugged the bandana down from her mouth and back around her neck. 

“I didn’t expect it,” Anne explained quickly. “I just react.”

“No, you’re right, I—I got too familiar,” she said.

“I’d like you to get familiar,” Anne said, stepping closer.

Ann blushed. She turned awkwardly back to brushing the horse, but had a hint of a smile on her lips. Anne watched her work, and Ann’s face slowly fell into a pensive concentration. The girl looked less ethereal and more ordinary, and Anne saw for the first time the thin, grey rings sinking under her eyes.

“Is everything all right?” Anne asked. “Your daddy give you trouble about me yesterday?”

“Oh—” Anne waved a hand. “—it’s not that. It’s nothing, really. I met the reverend yesterday, and it didn’t—he’s—well, I’d rather not talk about it. It’s nothing that I want to bother you with,” she blustered. 

Her brushing became feverish. Anne placed her hand on the girl’s shoulder and silently asked for the brush. Ann set it down instead.

“Sorry, I’m—I’m a bit embarrassed. I’ve never w-wanted to be forward before, and—” Her cheeks burned a deeper crimson. “My bravery comes in spurts. I—you’re—"

“That’s all right,” Anne said, smirking. “I find your coy courage fascinating. You don’t have to talk about the reverend if you don’t want to. Sounds like he doesn’t deserve your thoughts, anyway,” she added with a wink.

“I—thank you,” she said, laughing at herself. “I’m sure you’d like to see our wild ones, wouldn’t you? I know that’s why you’re here, to help me train them.”

“Wherever you are is where I’d like to be,” Anne said, teasing another laugh from the girl.

“You’re too much,” Ann said. 

Anne loved the way her grin touched her eyes.

Ann led her to a wide wooden corral with three horses spread on the ends, chewing on the grass outside the pen. They lifted their heads when Ann and she approached

“I just want to get them used to a human sitting on their backs,” she said. “You said you didn’t mind falling, so…”

Anne shed the poncho and rolled up her sleeves. “Which one would you like first? Give me the hardest one,” she challenged.

Ann smiled and pointed. “That one—the bay—has always given me trouble. Doesn’t like me, I think,” she said. 

Anne expected to see a downcast expression or tears spilling down her cheeks, but instead Ann watched the beast with a gleam in her eye. A special woman indeed, and certainly not as coy as her demeanor suggested.

“How could anything not like you?” Anne murmured.

Hours passed by. Ann hadn’t had the horses more than a few weeks; they were truly wild, throwing Anne off sooner than her knees could find purchase. Her bravado hid her lack of skill or experience, or maybe the girl didn’t care. They laughed together, and in only a few hours, Anne learned to crave the sound.

In the early afternoon, when Anne was covered in dirt, bruises, and just a little blood, Ann opened up to her about her engagement. They sat together in the long grass, catching their breath. Ann rested her head on Anne’s shoulder. Anne made a whistle out of the thick grass leaves while Ann watched, mumbling her troubles in Anne’s ear.

“He frightens me, the way he watches me and looks at me. I don’t want to marry him. I won’t,” she declared. “I just—I know my father will be furious.”

“Then what are you going to do about it?” Anne asked.

Ann’s eyes flicked to Anne’s lips, her eyes, and back again, as if asking for permission. The space between them waned. Anne took the girl’s chin gently in her hand and drew them close together, until their noses brushed.

“Is this what you want?” Anne murmured. 

Anticipation sang in her chest and clouded her thoughts. Their lips nearly brushed when she spoke, yet Anne resisted the inclination to tilt her head just a little.

“Yes,” she breathed, a warm gust on Anne’s lips and cheek. Yet the girl waited for her.

Anne let go of her face. She was truly pretty, threads of her long blonde hair slipped free from the braid and caught on her pink lips, her eyelashes, and swept across her freckled cheeks more gently than Anne could ever dream to touch her. Her eyes fluttered open, confused. Anne didn’t pull back.

“Then take it,” she said. “If you want it.”

Their lips were so close that Anne felt the cold air Ann inhaled as well as the warm. It was intoxicating, like so many dizzying glasses of whiskey, that Anne could barely hold on to a thought. Ann couldn’t be faring much better. Anne asked nothing of her but to tilt her head and touch their lips together. She would do everything else, if the girl wished.

Ann kissed her. The combination of the pressure of her dry, cold lips and the experimental brush of her warm tongue teased a groan from both their throats. She must have kissed someone before; no one’s first kiss was this good. Anne resolved to ask in the future, at the risk of the girl seducing her to talk about her own past loves.

_ They were like ships in the night _ , Anne would tell her.  _ Unlike you _ .

Maybe it would be a lie. Maybe it wouldn’t.

She cradled Ann in the grass. The wind tossed loose strands of hair and played with their clothes. Ann laughed, holding Anne’s hat on her head to keep it from being whisked away by the wind. The grass scratched their arms and legs, and their pleasure and laughter slowly faded as they itched an adjusted.

“I’m uncomfortable,” Ann said, itching her arms. “But I’m not done with you.”

“I have a room above the saloon. I was going to stay there tonight,” Anne said. She grinned mischievously. “If you come with me, everyone will know you’ve followed the nasty stranger into her room. Your daddy’s sure to hear about it.”

“I don’t even know what he’ll do. Or the things people will say,” Ann mused. Fear struck her expression. “He’ll be angry at you. He might—might hurt you. I don’t care what he does to me. I can’t ask you to—”

“—I won’t let him hurt me. And I’ll protect you from him,” Anne promised. “If we’re going to do this. Are you sure?”

“I am,” Ann said, and they kissed again.

***

In the room, Anne wondered if the heiress would change her mind. 

While Anne gnawed kisses on her neck, Ann breathed, “I’m worried. How will you protect me from him? W-what if he makes me marry the reverend? Maybe we shouldn’t—”

Anne tucked her thigh between Ann’s legs and propped her up roughly against the door. Ann’s lips parted. She pressed a kiss just under Ann’s ear, her breath hot on the delicate flesh of her neck. Ann squirmed from the sensation. 

Anne said, “Well, Miss Walker, you’ll tell him you’ve got a new daddy. And after we’re through today, you won’t be pure enough to be a reverend's wife.”

That seemed to be enough, because Ann squirmed under her, whining. 

She begged, “Kiss me again, please.”

Anne wanted to entertain her. She truly did. But the girl’s wealth, her station in life, and the risk that came with her involvement—put simply, there needed to be an understanding between them. That this wasn’t a casual affair. Anne intended to assume responsibility for the girl, for her happiness, and no man or woman should get between them. 

That wasn’t an easy thing to get across, with their mutual need thick in the air and the heat between her legs clouding her head and buzzing on her tongue. 

Anne said, “What am I, sweetheart? Remind me. Why do I take charge over you like this?”

“Daddy,” Ann said impatiently. “Please, please, daddy. Kiss me.”

A blush flourished across Anne’s cheeks. Her eyes flickered to Ann’s eager face, eyes bright, and freckles highlighted by the rosy pink of her own cheeks. A fierceness to protect the girl rushed through her. She cradled her closer, sweeping a lock of curling gold hair out of her eyes, tilted her head and obeyed, pressing a kiss to Ann’s soft, warm mouth.

“You’re mine now, you know,” Anne whispered.

Ann hummed. “I do,” she said, as reverent as a wedding vow. That was enough.

Anne carried her to the bed. She tugged the dress off easily, dropping it to the floor while she stared at Ann’s body. 

The freckles on her cheeks continued to her shoulders, her chest, and even sprinkled across her stomach and thighs. All of her was bright and soft. Anne immediately ran her hand across the flat of her stomach, down the slope of her waist, and up the plane of her back, the dip of her spine smoother than anything had a right to be. Anne gathered her close, then rested her hands on the round of her butt and squeezed.

Ann smiled against her lips.

“Say it again,” Anne said. She meant it as a command, but it sounded like a plea as it left her lips.

Ann didn’t seem to mind. As Anne’s hands wandered her body, Ann guided them gently back to her ass and said, “I love it when you touch me, daddy. Especially here.”

Anne squeezed again, and noticed how Ann tensed against her. Ann’s finger played with her lip, prodding Anne’s jaw open before dipping it in her mouth. Anne chuckled and sucked her finger gently. Ann giggled into her neck.

“Your mouth is so soft and warm. Daddy, I want that down there,” she said, so sweetly Anne nearly obeyed.

“Soon,” Anne said.

Anne gripped her hip, guiding the girl to rock against her thigh. She held her backside with one hand to ease her into a rhythm. Ann was wet at the slightest touch, and soon they both gasped against each other, Ann from the pressure of Anne’s thigh on her clit, and Anne from the volume of the girl’s arousal, slipping the length of her thigh with violent ease.

Anne gathered her arousal with a finger and pushed slowly inside her. Ann tensed, then breathed out a bluster of a sigh before sinking into her touch. Anne smirked down at her, then rubbed circles into her clit while moving her finger in and out.

Ann writhed beneath her, her hands scrambling of purchase on the sheets. Finally, she tangled them in Anne’s hair, then pushed her down. Anne spread her thighs farther apart with her free hand, then parted her dark gold curls to reveal her gleaming pink clit. She was ethereal, the smell of her as intoxicating as the sight.

“You’re gorgeous, you know,” Anne said. 

While Anne kissed and sucked and memorized the shape of Ann’s clit with her tongue, Ann’s body poured around her like a fountain. Gentle groans and sighs spilled from her mouth, like her own private symphony. Anne curled her fingers, teased a squeal from her lips, and Ann breathed, “Oh, daddy, that feels  _ so _ good.”

The admission weakened her. The word, the desperation in her voice, everything. She wanted to hear her, over and over, until her heart was so tender and raw the gentlest sound from her lips would squeeze the life from her. 

“Where?” Anne purred. “When I hit it, say, ‘It feels so good there, daddy.’”

Anne curled her finger again, and Ann immediately reacted, her body curling out. 

“T-there,” Ann gasped. “I-t feels—there.”

Anne withdrew her finger, instead brushing the length of her clit with cruel, languid strokes. “‘There, daddy,’” she corrected. “If you don’t say it, I won’t touch you there anymore.”

“Daddy, please. It felt so good there, it’s all I c-can think about,” she sputtered, her body trembling with need. “Is you, touching me. Daddy, please touch me there again.”

“Sweetheart,” Anne murmured.

“Mm?” 

“Kiss me.”

Anne had a feeling the girl would do anything she wanted. Her kiss was desperate and sloppy, her movements disjointed and erratic. Her wet mouth opened at the slightest suggestion, and every touch seemed to send a tremor of excitement through her body. She ground her clit against anything she could reach, desperate to find relief. 

Anne offered her hand, taking her again with strong, powerful strokes. She’d never been closer to another human being in her life. Heat radiated from Ann’s skin. She kissed away the beads of sweat at her forehead.

“Please touch me there again, daddy,” she pleaded, nearly sobbing. “I can't take it anymore.”

Anne obeyed. Her orgasm came swiftly, alight in her eyes, her lips, travelling through her body in a gentle shudder. Her breaths came heavily, lifting her chest as she tried to catch it. 

Anne kissed her gently. She nipped her thighs, caressed her stomach, licked at her nipples, and rested at her soft, warm neck. She tucked her face there until Ann began to laugh and play with her hair.

Ann whispered, “You’re so sweet, daddy. I don’t think you’re really an outlaw.”

“Mmm, I’m only sweet for you, pretty girl. I’m mean to anyone else.”

“Mean how?”

Anne chuckled. “For starters, I don’t kiss anyone’s pussy, no matter how nice they ask.”

Anne’s mouth watered. She had half a mind to abandon the conversation altogether, just to taste her again. Without looking, she knew the shape of the girl’s swollen clit and the dips and curves when she lathered it with her tongue. She wanted to listen to the music of Ann groaning with delight.

“How cruel of you,” Ann said, as if she weren’t cruelty itself, laying beneath her so prettily, drawing Anne in again and again. 

“If anyone else has something I want, I take it. I don’t ask, and I don’t make deals. I certainly don’t wait for permission.”

“You waited with me,” Ann reminded her.

Anne couldn’t argue with that.

Ann seemed to take that as a victory. Her grin widened, and she settled so her head rested on Anne’s chest. Ann’s finger traced circles on the inside of her thigh, catching and slipping on her arousal. 

“Daddy,” Ann breathed into her, barely more than a whine. The word still burned her cheeks. “I feel how wet you are. Let me.”

Anne opened her mouth to say, “It’s only about you today, darling,” but Ann kissed her before she could. The girl grinned, then caught her off guard, pushing Anne to her back and straddling her. Anne fought her half-heartedly, trying to spin her back around, but Ann held her shoulders to the mattress with a firm grip. Ann’s aggression sent a new kind of warmth surging from her chest to her thighs.

Instead, Anne said, “Yes, sweetheart. I need you.”

Ann’s gentle, timid kisses on her clit deepened her ache. The girl’s warm tongue kneaded the bead of her clit, in slow, agonizing strokes, and a sound like a low growl crept from Anne’s throat. The image of Ann’s lips and tongue sticky with her arousal brought Anne to the edge embarrassingly fast. 

Anne pulled Ann back to kiss her mouth, tugging roughly at her hair. She needed a kiss to ease the tide of her imagination, to hold her orgasm back, to let her savor Ann’s lovely lips awhile longer.

“Was it unpleasant, daddy?” Ann asked, knowing full well it wasn’t.

Ann’s lips gleamed. Anne trembled from the fierce heat humming in her thighs. She kissed and swept her tongue over Ann’s bottom lip to taste her. Anne’s arousal on her mouth was heavy and thick, and they kissed until their mouths were clean.

Ann lightly brushed her fingertips over Anne’s swollen clit. The light pressure of her nails scratching the flesh made Anne gasp. Ann’s hand kept going, teasing her entrance, then scratching the slick insides of her thighs. Anne growled.

“Sorry, daddy,” she teased. “I’ll be gentler.”

“No. Again. Rougher,” Anne commanded.

Ann smiled wickedly. “Okay, rougher,” she said. Anne waited, then pulled her hair until she added, “Okay, daddy,” in a strained, heaving breath.

Ann took her hand away, tucked her hair behind her ear, and pressed a kiss to her clit, then she sucked, humming from the taste. Anne couldn’t get enough. Ann licked and sucked and lathered and finally bit, the scrape of her teeth ripping the final groans of pleasure from Anne’s throat.

Wetness spilled from between her legs. Embarrassing, yet worth the lovely, astonished giggle that burst from Ann’s mouth. Anne expected her to lay by her side and kiss her face, but she stayed where she was, running the tip of her tongue lightly over Anne’s clit as she recovered.

Just as Ann relaxed into her arms, raised voices made their way though from the saloon below. They were muffled by the floor and their heavy breathing. Anne sat up.

“That’ll be mister Walker, coming to fetch his daughter,” Anne sighed.

She stepped into her trousers, then strapped the pistols across her waist. In the corner of her eye, Ann watched her, hugging a thin, white blanket to her chest. Somehow, the girl still looked like an angel, innocence itself. 

“How would you like to be found by your father’s men? Dressed, like the lady you are, I suppose. You’ve got time,” Anne said, picking up her dress. 

Ann grinned wickedly. “With you between my legs, making love to me,” she said. 

Anne arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure?” she said, bewildered.

“The reverend will be with them,” Ann said, matter-of-factly. “When he looks at me, all he sees is a thing he wants to have and hold and eat. I’m like meat. After tonight, when he looks at me, I want him to see you.”

“You want him to see me?” Anne repeated, smirking.

“I want him to see you, daddy, and know that I could never be his wife,” she said. 

Anne actually blushed.

Ann slipped on the dress, then sat at the edge of the bed. Anne knelt on the hardwood floor, cursing herself for the damage she was doing to her knees, and pushed the skirt of Ann’s dress to her stomach. Her thighs gleamed and her clit was still swollen. Anne kissed her sweetly; she was pretty, and didn’t know how else to tell her. 

With the threat of her father’s men downstairs, Anne couldn’t concentrate on the girl’s pleasure with the same attentiveness. Ann didn’t seem to notice, her mind humming with her own wild fantasies, and squirmed against Anne’s tongue and lips with increasing ferocity. Footsteps climbed the stairs; it was two, maybe three men. Anne readied her pistol, training it at the door. 

Ann groaned loudly as she came. Her father’s men surely stood outside the door by now, frozen in shock from what they heard on the other side, wondering if they wanted to open the door at all. Anne couldn’t help but grin at the thought. 

While Ann recovered, the tip of her tongue followed the length of Ann’s clit, then she kissed her. She gripped her second pistol as Ann gathered her in her arms, pressing gentle kisses on the corners of her mouth and across her jaw and neck. 

Out of the corner of her eye, the door swung open, and the reverend stepped into the doorway, reaching for his pistol. Anne pulled the trigger, aiming at the wall beside him. She didn’t want to kill the man, simply scare him. She had other plans.

The shot scattered them, and Anne breathed, “I might disappear for awhile, sweetheart. But I’ll find my way back to you. I promise.”

“I love you,” Ann breathed. “I don’t want you to go.”

Anne grinned. “I’ll come back. Don’t you worry about me.”

Anne met the reverend and one other man at the door. Thankful there were only two and she didn’t need to kill a man to make a point, she gestured to the stranger.

“You, take her home,” she commanded. Then she turned to the reverend, and a smile crept upon her lips. “I have business with a man of god.”

He hastened to obey her, guiding the girl at a run down the stairs as though Anne might kill them both on the way down. She gestured at them with her gun, encouraging the reverend to look.

She said, “When you look at her, what do you see? Even from here, you can see the round of her ass under her dress. And the sheen of arousal still fresh between her legs. With every gust of wind, she feels a chill, and the aftershock of an orgasm.” Anne grinned, meeting his eyes. “Who do you think she’s thinking about, every time that happens?”

The reverend reached for his gun, but Anne already had hers pressed to his stomach. 

“It’s a slow death, a bullet in the gut. And a painful one, too,” she informed him. “I’d like you to take your hand off the gun, reverend. And I’d like you to tell mister Walker that you’d like to stay in this town to marry his pretty daughter, but you can’t. Not because you see me every time you look at her, but because you can feel the will of the devil upon this unholy town. And then you will leave, never to return, or I’ll pull the trigger next time. Understand?”

“Who are you?” he said.

She smiled, and told him. 


	3. Hydra

Ann sat in the police station across from the sheriff, hugging herself tightly. A week had passed since her encounter with Anne, yet her body ached for the touch of her lips and the curl of her fingers. The memory prickled her skin and filled her down to her toes with a deep warmth at even the most inappropriate of moments. All Ann wanted was hard muscle under her worrying hands, and the tickle of dark, snarled hair over her mouth and tumbling between her breasts while Anne’s kisses crept lower.

“Miss Walker? Please pay attention, this is urgent. You should have come in sooner,” Sheriff Rawson snapped.

Ann sucked in a breath, then released it in a long sigh. “Yes. Sorry. What did you ask?”

Sheriff Rawson removed the cigarette from between his lips. He said, “Did she tell you where she went?”

“No,” Ann said firmly.

He stuffed it back in his mouth and took another drag. Smoke curled out of his nostrils when he asked, “Did she say if she was coming back?” 

Ann bit her lips. “Yes, but didn’t say when.”

“It’s essential that you remember correctly, Miss Walker. Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Ann insisted, irritated. “She didn’t harm me, sheriff. Didn’t do anything I didn’t want. Please, let me go home. My father is wasting your time and mine.”

The sheriff ruffled through the papers scattered over his desk. His pistol in its holster rested on a crooked stack of letters. Ann watched as his shuffling tipped the stack and papers tumbled to the floor, taking the gun with them. He caught it before it fell, but two loose bullets clinked on the wood. He stuffed the butt of his cigarette in an ashtray.

“Damn boy,” he mumbled. “Can’t shoot, can’t keep a desk clean. Useless.”

Sheriff Rawson made a big show of unfurling a freshly printed poster, already yellowed on the sides from dust. Before Ann could process what she saw, he handed it to her. She took it with a gaping mouth. 

He said, “We believe this is the woman you were seen with. Is this true?”

At the center of the poster was a hand-drawn portrait of Anne. It was an undeniable likeness of the handsome woman, with her snarled dark hair and signature black leather clothes. Ann traced the line of her jaw with a finger. Somehow, the artist captured the smirk on her lips and the frustrating smolder around her eyes, little details blurred or erased altogether by Ann’s memory. Ann was captivated.

“Y-yes,” Ann breathed.

This drawing was the first time Ann saw her face since their encounter. Instead of the panic she should have felt, grief wrenched her gut. Anne said she would return, and she hadn’t. Ann missed her.

Ann tore her eyes away from the drawing and read the large bolded letters below:  _ Wanted: Anne Lister—vandalism, robbery, kidnapping, murder. Very dangerous. _

Lister. Ann stared at the word, pounding it into her head until the shape of ink lost its meaning. Lister. The name struck fear into her heart, filling her with stories spread since her youth. Stories of whole towns dripping with blood and horse hooves pounding the dirt like thunder. Anne Lister, whose lips touched her gently, who brought her to euphoria, and who pointed her pistol at evil men like she cared about protecting little Ann Walker. Her hands trembled.

After the encounter, when Ann’s body still hummed from the outlaw’s reverent kisses and practiced touch, the reverend Ainsworth and her father shouted outside her room.

Her father exclaimed, “Thomas, is Ann alright? What happened?”

“This town is cursed,” Reverend Ainsworth spat with rising anger. “Claimed by the devil. No woman is worth my life. Adultery is a sin that can be forgiven, but this—no. I have no more business here. God help the holy man who chooses to stay.”

At the time, Ann wondered what Anne said to him, or if the image their entwined bodies left behind his eyes was so appalling. Now she had an inkling; it was Anne herself that terrified him. Half of her was disgusted. Half of her hoped Anne gave her father the same treatment.

Rawson sighed, “Whatever she told you, Miss Walker, I need to know. Seducing and deceiving a respectable woman such as yourself is on the tamer side of her heinous crimes, but still. It’s important, and we need all the information we can get to bring her to justice.”

Ann’s gut sank. Anne was a Lister. Despite her instinct to defend someone who only showed her kindness—even more, tenderness—her mouth flooded with questions about the woman she barely knew.

“Who did she murder—and—and kidnap? What did she steal?” Ann sputtered. 

“I’m sure you’ve heard of the Listers before. It’d take all day to read that kind of list, ma’am,” Sheriff Rawson said gravely. “Now, miss Walker, what did she—"

“She didn’t tell me anything,” Ann said bitterly.

Lord, and Ann felt so  _ safe _ in her arms. She was a fool. It figures, one trip to the saloon to seduce a rough, wayward woman that would grind her father’s gears, and Ann chose the devil herself. The devil, who was sweet, protective, and kind—and a liar, a thief, and a murderer. 

Is this what it meant to be tested by God? What was the answer to the test—that Anne was misunderstood, slandered by those that never bothered to look past a falsehood, and Ann must rise to defy them? Or that Anne—wildly attractive, handsome, charming—crossed Ann’s path to test her will against the power of lust? Ann doubted the reality was so black and white.

“Hmm.”

The sheriff took the poster from her, lost in thought. He pinned it to the wall. Its clean, crisp corners stood out from the surrounding posters, but the grainy likeness of Anne’s dark, captivating eyes held Ann’s attention. 

Even as her gut welled with anger, her heart throbbed with a deep, dull ache.

***

Ann lay in bed, fighting to unstick the portrait from her brain. Every time she closed her eyes, Anne was there, color and flesh surfacing from the grain of her irises and the shadows of her nose and lips. The thin curve of her top lip sent a rush of warmth from her chest to her thighs. Ann was powerless to stop the memories of the kisses gnawing her neck and shoulders from seizing every nerve in her body. Anne’s teeth nipped her breasts, her nails scratched her thighs, and her dark, lovely hair that smelled like fresh grass tickled—

Ann stood up violently, wiping the sensations away with trembling hands.

Anne was evil. Anne was a liar, a thief, and a murderer. Her command over Ann’s body was a curse. Ann hated her. And yet, if the outlaw stood before her now, all it would take is the shadow of a smirk, the tip of her hat, or the bulge of muscle under a smooth cotton shirt for Ann to surrender her body to her. She was only human.

Ann longed to be held like something precious. Her longing lured in thoughts of Anne’s strong, firm hands, and the way they looked splayed over Ann’s delicate skin. Ann’s small body pressed against Anne’s large one, protected and safe. She banished the thoughts from her head, repeating in her mind until the image faded,  _ Anne is evil, a liar, a thief, a murderer _ . _ Evil, evil, evil. A murderer. I hate her. _

Instead, it did little to ease the flush blooming across her body or soothe the ache between her legs. Her thighs glowed a rosy pink and gleamed with arousal. The mental distance she tried to put between her thoughts of Anne and the needs of her body only augmented the tension. Ann trembled with frustration. 

Anne was miles—hundreds of miles, even—away, yet Ann surrendered to her as if she were there. Ann touched herself, pretending it was Anne’s long, strong fingers smoothing and rolling her clit. She closed her eyes. She missed the tickle of her hair, her warm brush of breath, and her sure strokes. Ann murmured to herself.

“Daddy, that feels so good,” she sighed, and saw Anne’s awed expression behind her closed eyes. “Touch me more. Please, daddy, please.” 

In her mind’s eye, Anne smirked into their kiss. Her own breath tickled her mouth, and she ached for the pressure of Anne’s lips so fiercely the ghost of it was just as good.

“You’re such a good girl, undoing yourself like this. Aching for my hands to claim you,” Anne growled. 

Maybe she would nip Ann’s ear, or press a trail of kisses down her throat. Ann longed for her to squeeze her thighs. Cold air brushed her exposed skin, leaving her shivering with anticipation. Between the memory of Anne’s teeth, the wet tickle of her tongue, and the pressure pooling in her belly, Ann was already a mess.

“And you—ugh!—are a murderer,” Ann huffed. She buried her face on the pillow, condensation from her own breath soaked her cheek.

“Am I? I think you like it,” Anne breathed into her ear. “That’s why you’re touching yourself, thinking of me. I wonder why? You aren’t usually this naughty.”

“Anne—”

“We’ve talked about this, my love.”

“Ugh, fine. Daddy—”

Just when she got what she wanted, Anne would pull away. Ann reached to catch her in a kiss. Anne appeased her, humming against her lips, the gentle vibration in her throat drawing Ann closer to her. Ann gasped, feeling it even though it wasn’t there.

“Mmm. Much better, darling. It affects you as much as it does me, doesn’t it? Maybe even more—look at you, unravelling under your own touch, trembling even at the thought of me,” Anne said, her voice like a purr between Ann’s heaving breaths. 

“N-no, daddy,” Ann gasped. “I don’t need you, I don’t need you.”

She willed away thoughts of Anne, her touch, the burst of warmth in her chest every time she called her daddy, everything. She rubbed her clit until her wrist ached. She willed herself to come, but there was nothing—no flourish in her belly, no desire that seized her and pulled her in. Just the dark room, her own heavy breathing, and a pain creeping up her right arm.

But what did she want? Ann wanted her to twist her father’s gut with malice for her spirit. Ann wasn’t a little girl made obedient simply by her unfortunate existence. She could choose the life she wanted, even if it was lawless. Anne, though cruel and sinful, had already shown her more tenderness, kindness, and thought for her desires than her father ever had. His anger would cut her free for good.

Ann wanted to be claimed. For Anne to be inside her, one hand free to squeeze her throat, the other caressing her ass sweetly. Kneeling on a bed or sitting in the outlaw’s lap, guns pressed against her thighs—either would do. She wanted to be full of her, to call her daddy like a plea, then as a terrible need while her hips swayed with want, then as a blubbering mess of thank-yous when she finished. 

Ann would endure any pain if it meant daddy would touch her forever. The practiced touch of daddy’s long fingers. Daddy’s snarled hair. Daddy’s taut bicep under her frantic grip. She wanted daddy to take her, choke her, finish her, then melt into her wet, weak, trembling body.

Her hand slipped on the wet of her own arousal. Ann gasped for Anne, two desperate syllables whining in the dark, dribbling from her lips like a cry to be saved. A hot gush swept through the center of her chest down to her toes, soaking the folds of her sheets and blankets. 

Ann lay still and panting in the dark. A sharp cold stung her thigh, hard and hollow like the barrel of a gun. Ann gasped, flung the blankets off of her legs, and felt around in the dark for the object. When her fingers curled around the coin, she let out a sigh that turned into a heaving sob.

***

Three weeks after Anne promised to return, she came. 

Ann rode a young mare on the rim of the Walker ranch, following the rolling grass to a sparse wood. The wind tossed her loose hair under her hat and sent a chill to the marrow of her bones. She eased the mare along gently, tucking one gloved hand under her leg to warm it while the other held the reins.

Wind touched the trees in gentle, shimmering waves, plucking reddening leaves from their branches. Oncoming winter quieted the forest. Migrating birds cawed overhead. Mice balanced on thick blades of grass, scurrying out of sight when Ann neared. 

Often, the clashing landscapes captured Ann’s attention fully, reining in her anxieties and wandering thoughts. It caught on clouds smeared across the sky like large brushstrokes on an oil canvas, wildlife fleeing from one hiding place to another, and the stark lines between rolling prairie grass, gnarled woodland, and the climbing blue mountains. Today however, instead of finding it easier to let her thoughts go, they drifted. No matter how much Ann resisted, she thought only of Anne.

When Anne arrived, the earth trembled before anything else. Ann guided her horse next to a thinning stream, peering into the water. It trickled like glass over smooth, colorful stones, and gentle rings hummed at its shores. She frowned. After a minute or two, vibrations peppered the water with waves, and her horse shuffled uncomfortably. 

Stories said that when the Listers come for a town, pounding hooves echoed from miles away, like thunder in the sky. Ann listened, her heart thumping in her ears, and thought that was enough like thunder to give the stories truth. She was wrong. A more furious beat drowned out the one in her chest, setting her body to a new rhythm. It thrummed first between her ribs, then spread outward to her throat and stomach. Her mare grew restless, trotting lazily down the river toward home despite Ann’s commands.

Panic gripped her body. If the Listers came to seize the town, the Walker ranch would be their first visit. They would no doubt collect Ann and cajole her father into submission—or worse. Ann brought the mare to a gallop, jumping through the grass and across the stream to reach the house as fast as she could. She arrived too late.

When Ann arrived, her father stood outside, surrounded by a semicircle of riders in black leather. Ann counted twenty or more. At their center, Anne dismounted, holding out her hand to Ann’s father. Too far away to hear and at the wrong angle to read their lips, Ann increased her pace, horror etched on her face.

A gunshot cracked in the air. Her mare went wild in panic, throwing Ann off and galloping back the direction they came. Ann fell flat on her back, a bolt of pain coursing through in her chest on impact, striking all the breath from her lungs. She gasped for air, and pain and breath filled her chest in equal measure. A gloved hand reached out to her. She took it.

“That was quite the fall, Miss Walker,” Anne said

Lord, how the drawing of Anne that stunned Ann’s mind did her no justice at all. Her sharp cheekbones, wide jaw, and warm, earthy-brown eyes made her handsome enough to forgive all her crimes. The grip of her hand filled Ann with longing for her strength; the memory of being held in her arms hollowed her like the memory of food claws at a starving belly. Yet Ann gathered the will to resist her, recoiling from the touch she longed to lengthen. She stepped back.

“You—you shot at me!” she accused.

“We shot into the air to warn you off. We weren’t quite sure who you were, and you charged dangerously close to our little gathering,” Anne said gently. “I didn’t mean for you to fall—I didn’t know the horse was so skittish. I’m sorry.”

Ann said nothing. Anne caressed her cheek with a rough hand. Her tenderness calmed the fury tightening Ann’s chest, and her warmth stirred memories of the brief moments they shared. Ann fought to suppress her affection. Despite herself, she leaned in to the outlaw’s touch.

“Look at you. Absolutely ethereal,” Anne murmured. “Did you miss me, Miss Walker? I missed you.”

“I know who you are,” Ann said stiffly.

Anne smiled. She said, “A person can be many things, all at once. You, for example, are the heiress to your father’s estate, as well as a rancher and horse trainer. You are a daughter, a sister, and a lover. We are most understood when people see our multiplicity, don’t you think?”

“You’re a murderer,” Ann spat. “A liar and a thief. You—you tricked me. You should have told me who you were. How’s that for multiplicity? That’s how y-you sleep at night, is it, pretending all the terrible things you do are okay because you love so kindly?”

Ann expected her to protest, laugh, or say something clever. Anne was a vulture, like all the others, and Ann was a piece of meat under her circling shadow. Instead, the smile fell from Anne’s lips. She pondered Ann with a measured look before murmuring, “Yes. How do you sleep?”

Ann furrowed her eyebrows. Before she could ask what the outlaw meant, her father called out, reminding Ann that they weren’t alone. 

He barked, “Don’t touch my daughter.”

“Time for me to meet the family,” Anne said with a wink. She sauntered toward Ann’s father once more, calling, “It’s nearly dinnertime, isn’t it? Surely you have enough for one more guest, Mister Walker, being the wealthiest man in town and all.”

Ann’s father pursed his lips. If even half of the stories about the Listers were true, they would murder the family, hang them in the town for all to see, and raid their home. Anne didn’t give them a choice. They couldn’t refuse her.

He eyed the other riders before saying, “One more, maybe. But twenty? Thirty? I simply don’t have that much food, miss Lister.”

Laughter and ill-mannered jokes swirled in the air. If Anne was a vulture, the gang of men and women that howled and jeered at her father and she were the murder of crows following her from corpse to corpse. Anne hushed them with a raised hand. Those whose faces she could see looked ruffled by the gesture, and Ann wondered if her comparison weren’t so far off. 

“The rest of my family are animals, you don’t want them eating with us. Don’t worry, Mister Walker, they’ll find their own meal,” Anne chuckled.

“They’ll be eating none of my animals, I hope? Punishment’s a whipping, I’d hate to have to get the sheriff involved,” he said.

Anne laughed, “I’m sure he’s already on his way. We declared ourselves rather loudly, to save you the trouble. Would you like to wait for him? I hear the law get as hungry as we do. Maybe even hungrier.”

Brushing off the law was a bold declaration. Sharing a meal with two men who hungered to kill her was as courageous as it was genius; with no words at all, Anne Lister declared, “I am more clever and powerful than the two of you put together.” And it was true. She flexed her power with nonchalant swagger, like a lion tamer rests their head between the jaws of a hungry lion and turns back to the crowd unscathed. 

Her father curled his lip. “No, that isn’t necessary,” he said.

The three of them entered the house. Anne made casual conversation, complimenting the architecture and decoration of their home. Neither Ann nor her father responded, but it was all the same to Anne, who went on with her own stories as if they were good friends. On separate occasions, she caught Ann’s eye, twirled her hair, and rubbed the back of her neck. By the time they took their seats at the table, Ann’s cheeks glowed crimson.

The servant set the table hastily. Each plate thwacked the wood or teetered dizzily when she set it before them with trembling hands. She spilled Anne’s glass of whiskey with her clumsiness, the tablecloth quickly soaking up the jet of caramel liquid. While she dabbed at the mess with a cloth, the servant blubbered an apology through her tears. Anne patted her arm gently.

“Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll just have another,” Anne said, flashing a smile. 

The servant made quick work of cleaning the mess and filled Anne’s glass. Her father stared at Anne, his lip curled in obvious disgust. Anne sipped her drink, raising her eyebrows in satisfaction. 

“You have excellent taste, Mister Walker. Something we share,” Anne said, swirling the glass and tipping the rest back in one gulp.

He said, “We don’t share anything. That’s swill, not that filth like you would know the difference. The only reason I’ve invited you to my table is out of respect for my town and the danger you pose—I’d like no innocent lives to be taken. And I’m not blind to the interest you’ve taken in my daughter. That needs to end.”

Anne said, “Bold assumptions, Mister Walker. Despite the pride you have in it, your town is not interesting to me.”

Between them, Ann hugged herself, trying to disappear. Anne set her glass down loudly and smacked her lips. She couldn’t stand the awkwardness.

“Daddy, could you pass the corn?” Ann said, hoping to ease the tension.

Two chairs screeched when her father and Anne reached for the plate at the same time. Anne took it, and passed it to her. Under the shadow of her hat, Anne’s smirk widened while her father’s scowl deepened.

“Can I get you anything else, darling?” Anne asked. Her hand touched Ann’s thigh under the skirt of her dress. Her pinky finger grazed her clit over her underclothes, and Ann nearly choked on her own saliva. 

“N-no,” Ann stammered. “Thank you.”

Grinning, Anne said, “Thank you…?”

Ann flushed crimson.  _ She’s not really going to make me do this? _ she thought.

Anne squeezed her thigh, and she squeaked, “Thank you, daddy.”

“Very good,” Anne said, her voice like a low purr. While Ann’s father struggled to gather the words to disown her, Anne continued, “You’re no doubt wondering why I came, Mister Walker. You see, I heard about the reverend ending his betrothal to your daughter. I don’t know whether she told you any details, but we made a...connection, a few weeks back.”

“I won’t wed her to you,” he said coldly. 

“I’m afraid there’s only one person in this room who gets to make that decision,” Anne said. 

Anne’s finger traced gentle circles on the inside of her thigh. She marveled at the outlaw’s calm when her father stood from his seat and pointed his gun between Anne’s eyes. 

“You’d best leave and forget about my daughter, or I’ll kill you,” he said.

“I’ve got a gun pointed under the table,” Anne informed him. She squeezed Ann’s thigh again, and Ann realized she was lying. “If you move, I’ll shoot. You’ll be dead, your pretty daughter will be mine, and your entire legacy turned to dust. I would think twice before you make your next move.”

Ann’s heart raced. Did Anne know she knew she lied? She did, of course—it was Anne—but why? All she needed to do was tell her father Anne lied, and their lives were in her father’s hands. He would no doubt shoot Anne or turn her in to the sheriff, and Ann would be as she was now, stuck in one of his cages. 

She stared with wide eyes, wondering what to do, and Anne met her gaze and winked.

Then Ann realized: Anne wanted her to choose. 

Ann longed to escape her father and the marriages he wrought for her like a dozen gilded cages. Anne’s kind of freedom was so wild and vast she could hardly imagine herself in it; she wanted only to tend to the ranch as her late brother might have, without the leash of womanhood or strain of fortune. She could only hope that Anne’s lawless life was better than the one her father laid before her, though its price was surely too great. If Anne truly cared for her, she wouldn’t murder her father before her very eyes, would she?

Would she?

Ann covered the hand on her thigh with her own.

“Don’t kill him, Anne. Please,” she begged.

Anne curled her corner of her mouth in a smile. She said, “That’s his choice, darling. If he sets his weapon down on the table, right now, we’ll all remain friends.”

Her father looked between them, and succumbed to Ann’s wide, tearful eyes, resting the gun gently on the table. At Anne’s command, he slid it out of reach, and raised his hands in the air.

“Now you,” he said.

Anne lifted her hands with a coy smile and wiggled her fingers.

“Nothing, Mister Walker. You and your daughter were never in any danger. See? I’m not quite the monster you think I am,” Anne teased.

He lunged for his gun, and Anne drew a pistol from its holster behind her back.

“I see we can’t maintain even a front of friendship. I’ll see myself out, if I’m so unwelcome. Come, Miss Walker,” Anne growled, taking her hand.

Ann’s resistance stemmed more from shock than repugnance. Between her father’s venomous stare and Anne’s gentle insistence, she found herself at the crossroads she dreaded most. Despite making her choice, now that she had an opportunity to turn back, she faltered.

“W-what?”

Anne arched an eyebrow. She said, “The decision is yours, Miss Walker. You told me you wanted to escape your father, and this life, and here I am, extending my hand.”

Her father said coldly, “If you go with that murderer, I will disown you. You will be good as dead to me. I will report you to the law, and they will hang you like the common traitor you are. You’ll get nothing of my legacy. Nothing. You will lie in an unmarked grave instead of one next to your brother and mother.”

Death was a grisly thing. Ann was familiar with it. Legacy, fame, a fortune—all revolved in some way around death. Ann ached to feel alive. Why couldn’t one’s legacy be the feeling of wind tossing her hair? Was fortune about money, or could it be found in the red-ringed stones of the desert Anne spoke of? Perhaps Anne wasn’t a murderer at all, and she was hated simply because she was free, like how a spinster in the wood becomes a witch? Ann didn’t know. But she wanted to find out.

Ann took her hand.

***

Outside the house, the situation had escalated. Even the weather changed, the first drops of rain filling the air in a mist and casting a light fog inches over the ground. Ann hoped the grim weather wasn’t an omen.

The sheriff sat on his horse a comfortable distance away. He surveyed the band grimly, one hand resting on his pistol.

“You’re back,” he called to Anne. “Heard your uncle met justice further South. I’m surprised to see you here, and so confident.”

“We Listers are like hydras, sheriff,” Anne replied. “Cut one head down, and more appear, fiercer and more vicious than the last. An unfortunate thing for you.”

When the sheriff aimed his gun, a horde of circling horses swallowed them in a blur of black, brown, and roan blotches. A woman with a likeness of Anne around the eyes and nose—presumably her sister—handed Anne the reins of a black stallion. Anne extended her hand, and they leapt onto the beast, Ann nestled in her arms.

Gunshots cracked in the air, echoing like sharp bursts of thunder. Behind them, riders hurled indiscernible words, a horse cried out, and a woman screamed. Ann spun around in time to see a man roll off his horse and tumble, limp and lifeless, into the grass. Free of its rider, his stallion surged past the rest. Anne followed its trajectory with her lips pursed. The eternal laughter in her eyes faltered.

“Where are we going?” Ann yelled into the blustering wind.

For a moment, she wondered if Anne heard her. Anne faced forward with determination, tilting her hat to shield her face from the cold and rain. 

Anne said, “I’m going to make you my wife, Miss Walker.”


	4. Ann Walker, of the Little Town Walker

They travelled farther North than Ann ever had before. The mountains marked their journey, growing in size and changing color as they approached. In Walker, mountains peppered the horizon in a line of blotted blues, their peaks smaller than her thumb. Every hour they climbed farther into the sky, until finally they towered above her, cutting sharp angles in the clouds like a ring of teeth. Up close, trees, snow, and mossy stones mottled their crisp grey-blues. Ann shivered, from cold or awe, she wasn’t sure.

“Almost there. We’ll find something warmer for you,” Anne said. 

Anne held her close, tucking the corners of her poncho awkwardly over Ann’s shoulder. It caught and trapped a gust of wind, sending a chill through her bones. She tucked her fingers under her legs to keep them from getting stiff. Ann doubted she would ever feel warm again. 

Ann nodded in lieu of a reply, bobbing her head to the same rhythm as the gallop of the horse beneath them. 

As the flat prairie and rolling grass gave way to sparse wood and sharp thickets, anxiety stirred her gut. After the panic and chaos of their confrontation with the sheriff, Ann threw a dozen questions into the air. Where were they going? Were they really going to marry, and if so—how could it be legal without her father’s blessing? Where would they live? Would they go back to get her clothes? 

Anne murmured the answers in Ann’s ear. Ann heard without listening to them, each word less like sound and more like a sensation: Anne’s lips tickled her skin, her breath brushed her ear in warm puffs, and each syllable was a gentle vibration washing through her. Their meaning turned to mush in her head. Ann fought to untangle them only minutes from the camp, cursing herself. The uncertainty of it consumed her.

Ann picked at her dress, worried the Lister encampment would be as fearsome as the Listers themselves. At the head of the group, Anne and she approached the camp silently. The other riders mirrored Anne, their heads bowed in mourning for their fallen comrade. Earlier, Ann asked who he was, but Anne pursed her lips, turning her head as if the wind stole Ann’s question from the air. 

The row of riders filled the horizon with their presence, trotting toward the camp like a gathering storm. 

Ann tucked her face into Anne’s shoulder to shield herself from the horrors of the camp. Would prisoners line the camp, awaiting Anne’s sentence? Would a tree with a row of bloody nooses swaying in the wind overtake the sky as they approached? When she dismounted the horse, would the bones of hanged men snap and crunch beneath her boots? Even the heavy smell of Anne’s leather and sweat couldn’t tame her rolling thoughts. 

The outlaw charmed her, filled her brain, then seduced her into betraying her family, her town, everything she’d ever known—was love worth living like this? Regret wormed its way into her heart. She waited for the stench of death and rot, but it never came. When they came to a stop, Ann hugged her tightly, as if willpower alone might prevent her fears from coming true. 

“You can open your eyes, sweetheart,” Anne murmured.

Ann steeled herself against any manner of horror, then opened a single eye. The camp was in a clearing in the long grass at the edge of a wood. The other riders already dismounted and guided their horses near a small creek to drink, leaving the two of them alone at the rim of the camp. Around them, men, women, and even children were hard at work. They didn’t even look up to see who she was.

Anne dismounted, then extended her hand to Ann. Despite herself, Ann smiled gently, holding back a laugh. She trained from an early age and could dismount the steed herself with ease, but the gesture brought a blush to her cheeks, and she took Anne’s hand. The soft leather glove warmed her cold fingers, and the strength of Anne’s grip sent a blush to her cheeks. She longed to keep holding Anne’s hand, but Anne broke the contact as soon as her feet touched the ground.

Ann’s boots squished soft, wet leaves. She sighed in relief.

The Listers’s camp was essentially a nomadic town. Each woman and man had their role setting up, from pitching tents and tying horses to dressing a buck for dinner. Ann watched, and realized her fears and assumptions were unfounded; the woman’s crimson hands and arms were the only bloody things in sight. She peeled back the buck’s skin with grim determination, not the mirth of a thirsty killer. 

Anne weaved through the camp at a blistering pace. Ann struggled to keep up, nearly running into a line of men carrying a fallen tree. She spun on her heel to avoid tripping over a pot of boiling water, then dove into the first clearing she saw—the center of a circle of children shucking corn. Ann blubbered a rushed apology, then caught up to Anne.

Anne knelt near the first set of tents. Formations of three or four tents shared a small fire and a crate of rations. She struck a piece of steel with flint, then coaxed a fire to life with a gentle breath. Her lips puckered, full, pink, and soft, as bewitching as they were when they ghosted the sensitive inside of her thigh. At Anne’s gentle guidance, the tinder turned cherry-red, then flourished into a small flame.

Anne’s eyes flickered to Ann’s gaping mouth, and she smirked. She teased, “What?”

Ann swallowed and turned away, embarrassed from being caught. She said, “Nothing. You’re just so _fast_. I always mess it up. Whenever I go out, I have to bring extra tinder.”

Anne laughed. “Do you? Fire is a more delicate thing than you think. The trick is a light, constant breath. If you’re soft, it doesn’t take much at all,” she said, winking.

Was Anne teasing her? A blush spread across her cheeks.

“That’s—that’s not always true,” Ann blustered.

“Oh?”

Even laughing, Anne’s gaze penetrated her. The likeness of Anne on the poster and on the surface of her memory was wolfish and hungry. Ann recoiled from her. For a moment, Ann expected that formidable expression to transform the woman who only ever protected her into something evil, inhuman, and mythical—the Devil’s Prophet, a beast that deserved the name she earned. When the title left Catherine’s lips, it contrasted with the woman Ann knew so much that she looked the other way. Now, entirely at her mercy, Ann feared it was true. She braced herself. 

Instead, Anne softened when Ann stepped back. Her expression was pensive, like a fortune-teller reading the cards. Ann let out a breath and worried her hands on her skirt to hide their trembling. 

“S-sorry,” Ann mumbled, “I-I just—"

Ann wasn’t sure what to say. She was uncertain, not just about the half-finished sentence weighing down the tip of her tongue, but about everything. Anne. Her father. The little town that contained everyone and everything she’d known her entire life. The outside world that rendered her small and insignificant in its vastness, and what it meant to throw herself so violently into it with only a stranger to guide her. A dangerous stranger. 

Ann finished, “I don’t know,” and hoped Anne could understand. 

Anne’s eyes flickered to someone behind them. She pursed her lips.

“Not here, Marian,” she said sharply. 

Ann jumped, then spun around. Marian was the one from before, the shape of her face so like Anne’s. Her brown eyes were red and puffy, and tears washed a trail through the dust on her cheek. Ann couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad. Marian grit her teeth.

“I said this was going to be trouble,” Marian said. “I told you. And you never listen.”

She jabbed her finger at Anne like a weapon, but Anne hardly flinched. Ann wondered how she could be so brave. When her father raised his voice—even only to her brother—Ann cowered, trembling with fear like a trapped mouse.

Anne calmly waited for her to finish. When Marian fell silent, she said, “Breathe, Marian. It could have happened to any of us. Sometimes, it just happens. We can’t stop living because we’re afraid of danger or death. You’ve always had trouble understanding this.”

Marian clicked her tongue. “I don’t want to ‘stop living.’ I just—ugh! I just want you to exercise a little caution. Just a little more thought for others. And now it’s—it’s—too late for him.”

Saying the words sent a tremor through her body. Marian struggled to catch her breath. Ann stepped forward, grasping her arm to steady her. Marian batted her away. 

“I know, Marian. I’ll talk to you later. But not here,” Anne warned her again.

Marian’s eyes flickered between them. Finally, she scoffed, but obeyed.

Turning to Ann, she asked, “So. You’re Miss Walker?”

Anne must have told Marian all manner of things, and it was anyone’s guess what she thought. Miss Walker, of the town of Walker—wealthy, surely, to be a member of the namesake family, and everything that came with wealth. A good, easy life, far from the hardship so many in the frontier faced. A family legacy of cruelty and corruption, because no one became rich—and stayed that way—without a healthy helping of both. And to leave it all behind on the word of a criminal? Wretched. Childish. Maybe even unfathomably stupid.

Or maybe Marian saw Ann for exactly what she was: a girl lost in the politics of it all, controlled by the whims of her father, too afraid to defy him for the greater good, much less her own. Until now. 

“Yes,” Ann said. “I am.”

Marian wrinkled her brow. She said, “What happened in that house? Did my sister kidnap you? Threaten you? Promise you anything?”

“No. Nothing like that,” Ann answered firmly. “I-I wanted to leave. My father, he-he’s—” she searched for the word that could encapsulate him fully. Theirs was a complicated relationship. He loved her, yet she was more of a thing than a person, a bargaining chip, a responsibility he loathed. If only her mother hadn’t died, perhaps he would have been a kinder man. 

“He’s unkind,” Ann finished lamely. 

Anne stepped between them, waving her sister away.

“And there you have it, Marian. From Miss Walker herself. Now, if you’d like to do something useful, instead of accusing me of monstrous things—” Anne said.

Marian rolled her eyes. She said, “She’s too good for you. What have you done? Our faces are already everywhere—we don’t need another kidnapping in the papers.”

Anne laughed without humor. “That’s what I mean. Our faces are everywhere. Miss Walker came willingly—not that anyone will care or believe that. What’s the difference between one bounty and another, slightly higher bounty when both demand our death or captivity? Let them write fanciful lies in the papers. They, like young Miss Walker, need some excitement in their lives.”

Anne winked. Despite herself, Ann blushed.

Marian didn’t catch Anne’s lighthearted tone. Exasperated, she said, “Innocent people will be emboldened by the reward! Then we murder them when they try, and the law adds another death to our numbers, and the paper spins stories about how we’re bloodthirsty fiends who murder entire towns when we pass by. They call you ‘the devil’s prophet’ for god’s sake!”

“Then they’re idiots,” Anne replied coldly. “And they deserve what they get.”

Marian rubbed her forehead. She looked over her shoulder at the others around them who stopped to listen. 

“Get back to work,” Marian barked. Then she whispered, “I know. I _know_ , Anne, but this is why there’s a tension. Uncle James was trying to change things, in the end. But you don’t seem to care. And riding in, taking Miss Walker—none of that helps. And now, Sam is—”

“Not here, Marian!” Anne snapped.

“—dead,” she finished defiantly. “And when they bring in his body in the morning, you need to have something to say. To make it right. And Miss Walker—what happened last time can’t happen again, Anne, or it might all fall apart. You’re the leader now, you can’t—ugh, do _this_.”

Marian gestured at Ann, as if that explained it all. Ann looked between them, frozen, trembling, wishing she could disappear. She felt foolish. She felt like a child. Sam’s death was her fault, her responsibility, and she didn’t even know who he was.

Anne stepped in front of her.

“You’ve said enough. See? She’s shaking. I’ll talk to you later. But. Not. Here,” she repeated through grit teeth. 

Marian finally listened, waving people away as she left. The energy of the camp turned from ambient chatter to a low murmur, a drone as ominous as the buzzing of flies. Anne was unaffected. She turned to Ann and brushed her cheek with a gloved hand. Ann leaned into the touch, closing her eyes.

“I’m sorry. Marian is—” Anne scoffed. “Thoughtless. She blathers on about ‘tension’ and stirs it by bringing it up when we aren’t in private. I’m sorry she’s made you uncomfortable.” 

“N-no, it’s fine. It’s just me, I’m—I’m fine,” Ann said.

If there was anything worse than the death of a man being her fault, it was falling into Anne’s arms sobbing like she herself was the victim. She blinked tears from her eyes, then gave Anne a half-hearted smile. 

“I’m sorry about Sam,” she whispered. “I didn’t—if I had known, I would never have come. I would have stayed with my father.”

Anne lifted her chin with a finger. “It isn’t your fault. I’m glad you’re here. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, especially someone as daft as my sister,” she said. She pressed a gentle kiss to the corner of Ann’s mouth. “If it’s all right, I need to talk to that one privately, before she levels the camp with her frustration. I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

Ann had never been asked permission before. She flushed.

“I, um. Sure. I can—I can do something else, while I wait,” Ann stammered.

Anne said goodbye with a smile, leaving her next to the fire. Ann stood awkwardly, all the movement and swirling conversation of the camp urging her to move, to contribute, to _do_ something. She knelt down and gathered sticks from the dirt and dried pine needles to keep the fire going, aware of the strangers watching her and the blush creeping up her ears.

***

That night, the rest of the camp drank, told stories, and played haphazard melodies on guitars, fiddles, and a curious stringed instrument Ann had never seen before. Sitting next to Anne, she almost felt a part of it all, but her eyes fluttered closed every now and again as she fought exhaustion. The hours of travelling tired her out. She tugged Anne’s sleeve to tell her so, and the outlaw smiled tenderly at her before guiding her back to their tent. 

Anne’s tent was larger and more secluded than the rest. Ann blushed at the intimacy of sharing such a space with her so early in their relationship. They barely knew each other. 

She shook her head at her own ridiculousness: _she_ was the one who left her family, her town, _everything_ behind holding the arm of a stranger. It had certain implications: Anne wanted to take her as her wife. And they were criminals—it would be silly of them to follow prudish traditions. Right? 

Ann realized suddenly she had no idea who the Listers were, what they really wanted, and the measures they would take to get them. By going with Anne, Ann escaped her father, her dull life, and gained a lover and the ability to explore the world. Anne got—

Ann frowned, trying to figure it out. A lover? A wife? What was it, exactly, that drove Anne to act on her whim? She was the leader of a notorious gang who, apparently, wanted to lay low for awhile. Anne had risked more than her life wandering into Walker. Why did she think Ann was worth it?

Everything she’d heard, everything she experienced, and Anne’s hot and cold words muddled her brain. They were all so different, so conflicting. She didn’t know what was real. She didn’t know what to think. She was grateful that the darkness hid the conflict stamped on her face. She was grateful Anne couldn’t read her mind.

In the tent, Ann’s inner conflict bubbled to the surface. A burst of flame followed the sharp strike of a match. The flickering light from the oil lamp cast jagged, moving shadows over Anne’s face. Instead of a grin or a smirk, the outlaw wore a defeated frown. For the first time, Ann noticed large gray circles under her eyes.

“He was close to you, wasn’t he? Sam. The man who died,” Ann said. She hadn’t spoken in a few hours. Her voice cracked like a child’s. She cursed herself.

Anne cleared her throat. “Why do you say that?”

“I suppose it’s just a guess. Only—your sister looked like she’d been crying. And right now, you—do you want to talk about it?” Ann whispered. “Who—who was it?”

Ann watched someone die before, but from illness, not violence. When her mother finally died, she wet her sleeve one last time. She cried so much she thought she’d never cry again. Ann wondered how Anne faced it with hardly any emotion at all.

“No,” she said. 

“No?” Ann said, aghast, “You just, what—someone dies, and you—you never—”

“We will, when there’s time. When the body is retrieved,” said Anne. “We’re not monsters, Ann. But things are done in their own time.”

Sitting at the edge of the cot, Anne ran her fingers through Ann’s hair. It was a sweet, calming gesture. Ann leaned into her.

Ann said, “Can I make you feel better?”

“Hmm. There is one thing…” Anne said. She grinned shyly. “Are you very tired?”

Ann blushed, knowing what she meant. “No. Just tired of other people.”

“Then trust me. Lay down and close your eyes.”

Anne bent her gently over the bed. Her hands crept up the skirt of her dress to smooth the length of her back, lingering to knead her neck and shoulders. Anne’s strong fingers worked the knots in her muscles. Knots from riding all day. Knots from fighting with her father. Knots from all her anxieties unravelled, and there was only the roll of Anne’s fingertips, the butt of her hand, and her weak, limp back, finally able to relax. The exhaustion weighing down her eyelids earlier was gone. She wanted to feel the strength of Anne’s fingers everywhere.

“Anne, please touch me,” she said, her voice muffled by a pillow.

Anne chuckled, then pulled away. Ann lay collapsed on the bed, utterly helpless to move while Anne shuffled through her bags, searching for something. She found it and unbuckled her belt. The buckle hit the ground with a heavy thud. Ann’s heart pounded furiously. 

After a minute of jingling straps and a few muttered curses, Anne stepped behind her again. Ann opened her mouth to speak, but a firm, hard pressure pressed against the back of her thigh. She choked on her breath, then turned to see what it was, but Anne held her steady.

“Anne, I—”

Anne’s warm breath wet the back of her ear. She growled, “Lift up your skirt, sweetheart. Daddy’s cock is ready for you.”

Ann obeyed, gathering the fabric around her waist in a fist. Her heart thundered in her ears while she waited for Anne to continue. 

The ache between her legs grew until her patience waned. She rubbed against it, guiding the tip of the cock over her clit. She trembled from the sensation, and then Anne pulled away.

Ann groaned her displeasure.

“Use your words, darling,” Anne scolded gently.

Words. Words couldn’t bear the burden of pressure blurring her vision and want clawing at her belly. Words were too simple. Ann could barely think beyond the wet of Anne’s mouth at her neck, and the scrape of her teeth on her shoulder. Her cheek was wet with the heat of her own breath.

“Please,” she managed. 

Ann imagined how pathetic she looked, bent over the cot, her butt exposed to the cool night air. The chill crept between her spread legs and she moaned, desperate for Anne’s warm hands to hold her, aching for her strong fingers to stoke the fire between her legs. Her absence was maddening, yet the ache was pleasant, like the low growl of a hungry belly.

“Mmm,” Anne hummed. “I said ‘words,’ my love. Multiple. That was only one. Tell me, what do you want from me?”

“For you to—ugh—be inside me. Please, daddy. I want you to kiss me. I want to hold you while you make me come,” she begged. “Please daddy, I want your cock inside me. I want to kiss you while I come. Please.”

“That was very good, sweetheart. If that’s what you want, turn around.”

Ann obeyed. She gasped sharply when she saw Anne standing over her, naked. The flickering lamplight cast shadows over the curves of her body and highlighted the gentle bulge of her muscles. Crisscrossing thin leather straps and buckles held the cock in place. Ann blushed at the thickness and gulped at the length, but weakened from the gentle upward curve. In that moment, more than anything, she wanted Anne to take her.

With no pleading at all, Anne gathered her in her arms and kissed her. It was a wet, sloppy thing, their tongues searching, savoring, tracing, their lips soft, their warm breaths melting together. Ann relaxed entirely, and in the space of one deep sigh, Anne slipped the cock inside her.

Ann hugged Anne’s hips between her thighs. She bit her lip and looked up at Anne with a playful smile. 

Anne canted her hips slowly, the leather cock pressing into her over and over, so maddeningly slow Ann swore it was twice as long as it looked. Her hands wandered Anne’s tight body, tracing and squeezing her hard, round biceps and shoulders. Her fingertips ghosted Anne’s abdomen as she pounded her cunt with a gentle rhythm. Her stomach was a work of art, flexing gently and glistening with sweat.

Ann’s gut fluttered with want. Somehow, full, it wasn’t enough. Anne surrounded her. Her large hand caressed Ann’s thigh and squeezed. Ann was small, shrinking, so light Anne could do whatever she wanted with no resistance at all. She melted into the touch, shuddering as the cock sank deeper into her.

“Daddy,” she whined. “You feel so good.”

Anne kissed her. Her tongue brushed Ann’s bottom lip, then dipped into the wet of her mouth to stroke the inside of her cheek. Ann gasped, breathing in Anne’s warm breath. Anne laughed, closing her lips on Ann’s open mouth in a loving peck. 

Anne said, “You’re beautiful. So small, soft, and utterly glowing. You’re such a good girl, sweetheart.”

Ann flushed at the praise, but her mind spun. In reality, Ann was exactly as she seemed: quiet, kind, and naive to the horrors the world held. But she could pretend to be otherwise, if only to excite her lover.

“What if—mmm—what if I wasn’t?”

“What?”

“If I wasn’t good—ah, what would you do instead?”

Anne slowed, then pulled out. Ann gasped from the emptiness. Anne took her chin.

“What am I going to do with you the next time a handsome woman turns your way? I know how weak you are for an attractive face. You can’t help yourself, you’ll go away with her,” Anne scolded.

“No, daddy. I won’t. I promise.”

“Hmm, but how do I know? You’re like butter under my fingers. Melting underneath me like an affection-starved puppy, begging to be pet. What if someone else catches your attention?”

“No,” Ann said. “No, daddy, I’m all yours.”

Ann touched her cheek. The smooth, sharp planes of Anne’s face were more perfect than anything she had ever drawn. A life of travel and constant sunlight wore wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and lips and teased a single freckle to the surface of her cheek. Anne was the most beautiful person she ever saw. 

“No one’s as handsome as you are,” she whispered. 

“I’m going to have to stake some kind of claim on you. Something your body will remember forever,” Anne said. Then she paused. “I’m going to get rough, darling. Is that all right?”

 _Yes!_ she nearly cried. She desperately, desperately wanted Anne to claim her. To mark her so everyone knew whose she was. Instead, she held back her desperation.

“Rough. Rough how, daddy?”

Anne brushed her clit with teasing, feather-light strokes while she answered, “My cock will know every inch of your insides, over and over. I’m going to fuck you until you can’t even speak your own name. And then I’ll fuck you until you forget it. The only word your pretty mouth will know is daddy, and the only feeling your body will remember is me inside you. Does that sound all right?”

Ann’s body buzzed from the attention on her already swollen clit. Anne played her like an instrument, her fingers plucking and brushing lightly, but Ann didn’t want a lovely melody, a build, and a lasting crescendo. She wanted Anne to unleash everything, to bring her to tears. She wanted something raw, messy, primal, powerful.

“Yes, daddy. Yes. Please.”

Ann tugged at her weakly, pulling her closer. But Anne resisted, smirking.

“This is a punishment, darling. You’re a naughty thing, I can’t give you what you want.”

“Mmm, what do I want?” she said innocently.

Anne raised an eyebrow, then said seriously, “You’re a greedy thing. You want kisses. You want to look at me and touch me. Instead, you’re going to turn around. You’re going to take what I let you have and nothing more.”

Ann surrendered the last of her resolve. The commands were like strings and Ann a puppet; her own body moved without her control or permission. She shed her dress and lay flat on her stomach, waiting for Anne to do as she wanted. The wait was cruel; there was a hold somewhere in the tent where a draft creeped in, covering her skin with gooseflesh and catching on her arousal. 

Finally, Anne caressed her ass, smoothing her thumb over the curve of one cheek.

“You’ve always been daddy’s perfect little girl, haven’t you? You never did anything wrong. Always wearing your pretty dresses, saying good morning to the horses, smiling at the men in town, admiring the sheriff’s shiny badge?”

While she spoke, the tip cock circled her entrance. It caught and slipped on her arousal, stroking the length of her clit. Powerful. Rough. Ann groaned while Anne chuckled.

“Y-yes,” Ann stammered. “Un-until—”

Anne smacked her cheek. The clap of sound was louder than the sting of pain, and Ann gasped.

“Until a handsome woman turned your way. You don’t even care that I’m an outlaw, do you? You just needed someone handsome to take you away from your mean daddy. Is that all it took for you to abandon your ethics? Your morality? God?”

The sting began to fade. Ann wanted it again, over and over, until she was numb.

“No, it was—was love—” Ann said. “I love you.”

Anne adjusted behind her, kneeling to kiss the curve of her spine. Each kiss was unbearably gentle. Ann missed the teasing pressure of the cock. Worried that Anne changed her mind, she whined, desperate to show Anne how needy she was.

“Love? Look at you, offering yourself to daddy. Soaking wet, sticky with want, begging daddy to hit you, to turn your ass bright red. Begging for my cock. Don’t say love when you mean lust.”

Anne smacked her again, and the sting of it rang through her body. And again. And again, like a naughty child. A bead of arousal slithered down the length of her clit and over her thigh. She nearly screamed when Anne’s warm, wet mouth licked and sucked along the glimmering path.

“You taste so good, sweetheart. I could spend the rest of my life drinking whiskey to get the sweet taste of you off my tongue and never succeed.”

“Again, daddy. Please,” Ann pleaded.

“Again?” Anne said. “No, I don’t think so.”

Anne’s finger teased the length of her clit, then lined the cock up to her entrance. Ann focused all of her willpower into not backing up and filling herself with the cock, lest Anne torture her longer. She entered her slowly, as if daring Ann to take control. 

As it filled her, Anne whispered, “Who am I?”

“Daddy,” Ann answered through a choked breath. 

Anne smacked her ass, harder than any before. Between the rawness of her skin and the new, tight pressure of the cock, Ann screamed.

“A stranger,” Ann corrected. “I thought y-you were s-so handsome. Daddy, I just wanted you to fuck me. I just wanted t-to know w-what your lips felt like, and your strong hands on m-my—”

Anne struck her again. Ann cried from the pain.

“And who are you, sweetheart?”

“Ann,” she whispered. “Ann Walker.”

Without warning, Anne rut into her at a blistering pace. Ann gripped the edge of the cot to steady herself, and bit the corner of the pillow nearest her to keep the entire camp from hearing her scream. 

There was something about not being able to see her, not being able to touch her, that stoked a yearning in her belly. A deep, primal ache that clouded her thoughts. Affection otherwise released in a squeeze or a kiss was trapped within her, sinking down the core of her body until it reached the places Anne deigned to touch her. Strong hands squeezed the outsides of her thighs. Her ass was raw from sharp, measured strikes. Her cunt was unbearably full, aching, and greedy for everything Anne had to give. Ann couldn’t see her, but felt the power of her lean, muscled body over and over again.

Ann quickly approached her climax as stars peppered her eyes and mouth from the cock hitting the same perfect, delicious spot over and over again in a disjointed rhythm, and Anne’s shuddering breaths wet the back of her neck. Anne felt her tense, ready for orgasm, and groaned, “No, darling. You aren’t allowed to come yet.”

It was like trying to stop the earth itself from spinning. There was too much momentum for a girl as small and weak as she to stop it through sheer force of will. She tried, and found her body out of control, shaking, bucking, desperately seeking release. Despite Anne’s commands, her orgasm burst like a swollen dam.

“Anne—daddy—I—I can’t—”

“So much trouble talking,” Anne said through her own shuddering breaths. 

Her tender skin caught the lightest breath from Anne’s mouth. Each gentle touch set her alight with pain. She was too sensitive and weak to do anything but melt beneath Anne’s lips and hands. Anne kissed the back of her neck. Ann groaned, and a string of drool dribbled from her mouth; she was too exhausted to close it.

“What’s your name, darling?” Anne asked.

Ann was too weak to reply. All that mattered was Anne, the steward of her mind and body. Anne settled beside her. They rested on the cot for minutes or hours, panting together.

After her heartbeat returned to normal, Ann realized she was cold. She shivered.

Anne withdrew a large fur blanket from beneath the cot and offered it to her. “Here. It’s bear,” she informed her proudly. “I killed the beast myself, a few summers ago.”

“With only your hands, no doubt,” Ann teased, spreading it over both of them.

Anne winked. “Of course. You know only a fraction of what these hands are capable of.”

Ann blushed. She whispered, “Are they capable of holding me?”

Anne smiled sweetly. “Yeah.”

Anne gathered her close. She kissed her lazily, pressing wet kisses on her shoulders, her neck, up her jaw. Ann felt like they were floating in a cloud.

“You are perfect, you know,” Anne murmured. “An angel.”

“Do you really think I’ve abandoned god?” Ann asked.

“Oh, that? Hmm, I feel the opposite. What I show you of the world will open your eyes. You’ll wonder how you lived in such a tiny pocket of it so content for so long,” Anne murmured, already dozing off.

Ann never felt stifled by her home and its endless blue skies and wide-open grasses. The world she knew already felt massive. Her horses took her to its boundaries, yet she uncovered a new mystery every time she sat in the saddle. She felt she might never unearth all the wonders it held. Now she never would. Grief pooled in her chest, sinking her heart.

Ann fell asleep, knowing her world had suddenly and irrevocably changed. 


End file.
